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| Developing pupils' self-esteem |
Feeling secure is important for learning, but not sufficient, as this story is designed to show.
'Ana, what are you doing?' came the familiar question from the English teacher. Ana, as usual, was wandering around the classroom chatting to other children. She was not involved in the pair work task set by the teacher. Ana was a friendly, lively nine year old child but she created a headache for her English teacher. Ana never did what she was supposed to do. If she was given an activity to do on her own, she would wander around the class disturbing others or spend most of the time sharpening her pencil. If she worked in a pair or group, she would soon distract the other children and they would end up doing something else. One day, the English teacher kept Ana back after class to talk to her. 'Do you like English Ana? "Yes, I,m with my friends,' said Ana. 'But you never do any work in your English class. Why not? "Miss, I can't,' sobbed Ana. 'What do you mean?' said the English teacher 'I'm no good. Miss Stener (former teacher) told me I was no good at English, not like my sister.' said Ana.
The story illustrates the fact that Ana has developed low self-esteem with regard to her ability in English Self-esteem is based on the value we place on ourselves. Low self-esteem develops, as in Ana's case, when there is a gap between our self-image, le our awareness of ourselves, our characteristics, etc and our ideal self, ie the self we would like to be Children develop their self-image through the responses and reactions of other people to them. So Ana may have developed a negative self-image of her ability in English mainly through the
response of her former teacher, Miss Stener With regard to her ideal self, Ana was compared by the teacher to her sister and so realized that there was some kind of standard to which she did not measure up Children may often generalize from feelings of failure in one aspect of life, for example, school performance, to a feeling of failure as a person. So an overall low sense of self-esteem develops. We don' t know if this is the case for Ana, but an incident like this can often have serious effects on children's self-esteem.
Children's sense of self-esteem is developed through their perception of how other people view them If they receive positive feedback from others and are respected by them through praise, acceptance, being listened to and not laughed at, they will feel they have worth and value It will give them more confidence to take risks in future. Children with low self esteem often feel frightened of revealing their feelings in case they are laughed at or rejected. We can help to influence the way pupils respond to each other and show that respecting the opinion of others is valued behavior in our classrooms.
How can we give pupils confidence in themselves and so help to develop their sense of selfesteem. Developing positive teacher-pupil relationships will help in building a sense of security and confidence. But it may also be necessary to focus more explicitly on building self-esteem. We will consider the use of a procedure called Circle time.
Circle time
This procedure, suggested by Murray White , is designed to help pupils to express and share their feelings with others in a supportive atmosphere. It also provides opportunity for language learning.
Organization
Everyone including the teacher sits around in a big circle. If you have a large class, you could do it outside or m a hall so everyone can sit on the floor. Alternatively, split the class into two halves and give one half some work to do The smaller the group, the more intimate the atmosphere.
Procedure
Establish some basic rules first, eg
- No laughing at each other
- No speaking when someone else is talking
- Everyone must listen to each other
- Everyone has a turn
- No-one is forced to speak, if he/she doesn't want to
Each person takes it in turn to say something, starting with the teacher. This is important so the teacher can model what to do and give children confidence to have a go themselves. You could do circle time regularly, maybe once a week either at the beginning or end of class. Vary the focus each time, choosing from the examples below Let a child speak in LI if he/she can't say it in English and then rephrase it for him/her in English.